In the bustling heart of old Delhi, Indian bookseller Mohammed Mahfooz Alam sits forlorn in his quiet shop, one of the last to sell literature in a language poets have loved for centuries.

Urdu, spoken by millions today, has a rich past that reflects the way cultures have coalesced to forge India’s complex history.

But its literature was swallowed up by the cultural dominance of Hindi, battling false perceptions that its elegant Perso-Arabic script made it a foreign import and a language of Muslims in this Hindu-majority nation.

“There was a time when, in a year, we saw 100 books published,” says Alam, 52, lamenting the loss of the language and its readership.

The narrow streets of Urdu Bazaar, in the shadow of the 400-year-old Jama Masjid mosque, were once the core of the city’s Urdu literary community, a center of printing, publishing and writing.

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Today, streets once filled with Urdu bookstores filled with scholars debating literature are now full of the aroma of sizzling kebabs from the restaurants that replaced them.

There are only half a dozen bookstores left.

“Now there are no takers,” Alam said, pointing to the streets outside. “It’s now a food market.”

Dying “day after day”

Urdu, one of the 22 languages ​​enshrined in the Indian constitution, is the mother tongue of at least 50 million people. people in the most populous country in the world. Millions more speak it, as well as in neighboring Pakistan.

But even though Urdu is widely understood by speakers of Hindi, India’s most popular language, their scripts are entirely different.

Alam says he sees Urdu literature dying “day by day”.

The Maktaba Jamia bookstore that he runs opened its doors a century ago. Alam took over as director this year, driven by his love for the language.

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“I’ve been sitting since morning and barely four people have come,” he said gloomily. “And even those were kids who were going to college or school and wanted their study books.”

Urdu, sharing roots with Hindi and mixed with Persian and Arabic words, emerged as a hybrid speech between those who came to India through trade and conquest – and the people among whom they came. are installed.

But Urdu has struggled to be seen as linked to Islamic culture, a popular perception that has grown since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.

Far-right Hindu nationalists seeking to diminish the place of Islam in Indian history have opposed its use: over the past decade, protests have varied from the use of Urdu in clothing advertisements to graffiti.

“Urdu has been associated with Muslims, and that has affected the language as well,” Alam said.

“But that’s not true. Everyone speaks Urdu. You go to the villages, people speak Urdu. It’s a very sweet language. It contains peace.”

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“Feel the beauty”

For centuries, Urdu has been a key language of governance.

Vendors opened their first stores in the Urdu Bazaar in the 1920s, selling stacks of books ranging from literature to religion, policy and history – as well as texts in Arabic and Persian.

In the 1980s, more lucrative fast-food restaurants slowly took hold, but business has fallen dramatically over the past decade, with more than a dozen bookstores closing.

“With the advent of the Internet, everything became easily accessible on mobile phones,” said Sikander Mirza Changezi, co-founder of a library to promote Urdu in old Delhi in 1993.

“People began to think that buying books was pointless, which affected the income of booksellers and publishers, and they turned to other activities.”

The Hazrat Shah Waliullah Public Library, which Changezi helped establish, houses thousands of books, including rare manuscripts and dictionaries.

It aims to promote the Urdu language.

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Student Adeeba Tanveer, 27, who has a master’s degree in Urdu, said the library provided a space for those who wanted to learn.

“The love for Urdu is slowly coming back,” Tanveer told AFP, adding that his non-Muslim friends were also keen to learn.

“It’s such a beautiful language,” she said. “You feel the beauty when you talk about it.”

Source: AFP